A place to share...
ideas about teaching for the future...
brainstorms, projects, papers and reflections related to educational technology.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Open Learning as an Avenue for Higher Quality - #PLEK12

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kb35/349762358/

Facilitating an open course gets you thinking a lot about the benefits and challenges of teaching and learning in this environment. There are definitely challenges. The focus of week #3 was digital responsibility. Kristin Hokanson provided an excellent perspective on copyright amid some technical difficulties with Elluminate. We just chalk this up to part of the learning adventure, but I personally know how frustrating it is when a presentation doesn't load correctly or the audio doesn't stream well. In any case, Kristin handled it eloquently and we had some very positive feedback.

My aha moment this week highlights a potential benefit. The focus of week #3 was digital responsibility. We posted some resources from various sites providing guidance on copyright. Kristin, as an invited speaker, reviewed the course resources and noticed that some of our references took an outdated, highly conservative stance with regard to fair use. She provided updated resources and we were able to revise the content immediately. Think about the walled garden approach in the traditional classroom where one person's point of view is predominant. The content we posted was not wrong, but it didn't provide the whole picture. What would happen if all university courses, especially those that are offered repeatedly across the country or around the world, were open to feedback from others? Would that have an impact on course quality? In what other ways might quality be improved in this scenario?

My name is Christina Henson and I am a student in Dr. Strange's EDM310 class. I really enjoyed your video, "The Networked Student". I look forward to teaching children technology in the future as well. With all of the new technology and ways to learn, I truly hope assimilation will not affect everything we do for the sake of test scores. Education should be interesting. I think educators should be able to use their creative differences to make their classrooms instruction unique.

Nicely written entry. I’ve seen “gifts with strings” enough in personal relationships to know I want nothing to do with them. Thanks for giving some points of reference for code-based responsibilities.

I really welcome your endeavor behind this blog. You have successfully generalized the topic. It has made it easy for me to comprehend. I scroll through it almost every day. And thanks for updating regularly.